Well seeing as most people no or use Bittorrent , bit torrent , torants , torrants , torrents , BT torent or what ever you call it a guide might be handy for those little bit torrent tips and tweaks to help you get the most out of your setup, the guide is mainly based on the Azureus software.

What is a .torrent file its a small file 2 or 3 k in size this file contains the tracker and hash information on the file you wish to download.

Unlike kazza , winmx, Gnutella , Emule where you have a programme on the computer and open it up and enter the file you are looking for in the search box and the files are shown, The bit torrent network is different.

You have a tracker and to get these trackers you have to visit websites that host them, no files are on these sites just trackers or links, a few links are listed Here

To make these trackers work you need a bittorrent client there are plenty around but I use azurues a java based client as it good and does the job plus it only uses 1 port more info on this later.

Thatís the basics so you need

1. A client
2. Java installed
3. A torrent site or forum
4. Ports open on your firewall (if you use one)
5. Adsl or cable connection itís not really a dial up system

Once you have downloaded and installed get the safepeer plug in and install this (its on the same site) this will block and filter certain ips bit like peer guardian it will autoupdate each time you start azureus.

We will now change the default port azureus only uses 1 port unlike some other clients, the default bittorrent ports are (6881-6889) why change the ports simple its blocked by some trackers and isps you may get a speed increase as well.

You may get a message like "rejected by tracker - Port xxxx is blacklisted" error?

So open azureus and click View / Config / server and change the number in the incoming tcp port use any number between 49152 through 65535 say you pick 50321 enter it in the box and click the save button, you now want to add this port to your firewall for forwarding to your computers ip.

While you are in the config area if you click the transfer section you can set your max upload speed and max download i have my download on 0 this is unlimited or max, upload i have on 10 - 25 depending on what im doing if im using the net i will drop it down to 10-15 if im out i may increase to 25.

Im on 512/256 adsl but if you are on a slower or faster conection your speeds will be different but dont set it to max upload as this will cause problems always leave it lower.

Due to the way TCP works, when A is downloading something from B it has to keep telling B that it received the data sent to him. (These are called acknowledgements - ACKs -, a sort of "got it!" messages). If A fails to do this then B will stop sending data and wait. If A is uploading at full speed there may be no bandwidth left for the ACKs and they will be delayed. So due to this effect excessively high upload speeds lead to low download speeds.

You can also set things like the default download folder and where you want the .torrent files to be saved till you have finished the download.

Donít be mean and not seed a lot of sites use a ratio system i.e. if you leech files all the time they will ban you so try to keep your ratio up above 1.0

Ok so you have gone to a site clicked the .torrent file and nothing has happened this does happen on some sites use the right click and 'save as' save the torrent file to your desktop or where you can find it then you can double click and azureus will start the download.

Speed we all want it faster.

If its a new file with 1 seeder and 50 leechers it will be slow either wait a few hours for the seeders to increase or look on a different site they normally always show the seeders/leechers so a file with 130 seeders and 40 leechers will download fast, as a rough guide 700mb will download in around 4 hours if its got plenty of seeders.

Disabling Zone Alarm's firewall protection will not solve the problem as its filter will still be running in the background. A complete uninstallation is required. This issue is not limited to Azureus, and has been confirmed by users of many other filesharing clients including BitTornado, ABC, Shad0w's Experimental, EMule/Gnutella, and Shareaza.

Many trackers will ignore "6881 users" and it's the first place that an ISP will look. Port 50999 should be OK but experiment a little. Whilst testing, ensure that you use a healthy torrent with a fairly constant download rate.
Turn on encryption if your client supports it.